WordPress vs. Craft CMS: A Comprehensive Comparison (2025)

Is Craft CMS the best WordPress alternative in 2025?

WordPress has been the dominant Content Management System (CMS) for over a decade. But its main corporate sponsor recently withdrew 98% of their contribution hours. So you might be wondering: Is WordPress still the right CMS for me? Or is it time to switch?

The biggest risk in switching to a new tool is when you put in weeks of work, only to realize later in the process that it can’t do something you absolutely need. Let’s avoid that with a comprehensive comparison of WordPress vs. Craft CMS, looking at 115 features across 19 categories.

The Big Picture

WordPress began as a blogging tool. And it’s really good at blogging. If you want more than that, you’ll probably need to dip into its ecosystem. But that ecosystem of plugins and themes can enable your website to do virtually anything you can imagine. WordPress itself is free, though premium plugins and themes to add necessary functionality can start adding up quickly.

Much like WordPress, Craft CMS is an open-source CMS based in the same language, PHP. It was launched in 2013 by Pixel & Tonic. It has a free version with all features; paid versions start at $279 for year 1 and $99 for following years, and offer features including developer support and hosting.

W3Techs’s list of top Content Management Systems has WordPress at #1, powering 43.4% of the internet, and Craft CMS at #30, powering 0.2% of the internet. However, it’s more popular among the largest websites; a 2023 Cloudflare report on the technology used by the top 5,000 websites had it at #7.

Which one is for you?

For you to know, you need to know which can meet your website’s core needs. That’s the question we’re answering here.

Credits

Before we dive in: This is part of an ongoing series comparing WordPress to other content management systems. If you find this one useful, please check out the previous videos on Statamic and Webflow and subscribe to catch future videos.

Craft CMS’s team was kind enough to review this before the video was recorded and made several helpful suggestions. Of course, all opinions and any remaining errors are my own.

Content Management

Scheduling Posts and Pages

WordPress and Craft CMS both can schedule posts and pages in their core offering.

Scheduling Edits to a Post or Page

WordPress: No. But the PublishPress Revisions plugin adds this functionality for $69/year. I’ve used this plugin before and it gets the job done well, but its user interface has a steeper-than-average learning curve.

Craft CMS: Craft CMS allows saving a draft that will eventually replace a post or page, but does not have a way to schedule the draft to automatically replace the live version at a scheduled time.

Scheduling Edits to Part of a Post or Page

WordPress: Not in core. Block Visibility enables this in Gutenberg, and Bricks Builder does enable you to set a condition to display content if a certain date is reached.

Craft CMS: Not in core.

View history of revisions and restore a past version of a post/page

WordPress: Yes.

Craft CMS: Yes.

Custom content models (custom post types)

WordPress: Not in core. Plugins like Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) or Metabox add this functionality. ACF has a $49/year pro version, but the free version will satisfy many use cases.

Craft CMS: Yes, in core.

User roles and permissions so that different users can do different things

WordPress: Yes.

Craft CMS: Yes.

Editorial workflow approval process, so there can be a user type who can create content and submit it for another user to approve and publish

WordPress: Yes.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Workflow by Verbb ($49/year 1, $15/year thereafter) offers this feature.

Media management

Organize media library into folders

WordPress: Not in core. HappyFiles ($59/one-time) adds this feature.

Craft CMS: Yes,

Organize media library with tagging

WordPress: Not in core. Media Library Assistant (free) adds this feature.

Craft CMS: Yes, through custom fields.

Automatic image optimization on upload, converting to webp or avif and compressing

WordPress: Not in core. ShortPixel ($99.90/year) offers this feature.

Craft CMS: If users follow the recommended practice of displaying images via a transform, CraftCMS will optimize them automatically when displaying them on the front end. This includes displaying them in the webp and avif formats if the GD/ImageMagick extension in installed. The ImageOptimize extension adds the ability for these to be transformed on upload.

Batch optimize old images, converting to webp or avif and compressing

WordPress: Not in core. ShortPixel ($99.90/year) offers this feature.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Several Craft CMS users report doing this through the ImageOptimizer plugin, which does not appear to be currently available.

Automatically replace one image with another in every instance where it’s used across a website

WordPress: Not in core. Enable Media Replace, a free plugin from ShortPixel, offers this feature.

Craft CMS: Yes, in core.

Adaptive Images (automatically delivering correct image sizes for different screen sizes for better performance)

WordPress: Not in core. ShortPixel’s Adaptive Images plugin offers this feature.

Craft CMS: This can be done in core through building this functionality into your template. ImageOptimize ($59/year 1, $29/year thereafter) offers this feature.

Forms

Built-in default form builder

WordPress: Not in core. Two good options are Gravity Forms ($59/year for basic features, $259/year for all features) or WSForm ($59/year for basic features, $249/year for all features). There are a few free plugin options, but they’re limited enough that this is probably the #1 most likely feature that even small WordPress sites will need a premium plugin.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Two premium options are Freeform by Solspace (free version + two premium tiers) and Formie by Verbb ($99 year 1, $49/year renewals).

Conditional Logic (form fields that appear depending on something that happened in a previous form field)

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Freeform and Formie both offer conditional logic. (Craft CMS does offer conditional fields as a core feature, but it does look like you might need the third-party providers to actually do this in forms.)

Integrations to automatically send entries to third-party email providers like Mailchimp and Constant Contact

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Freeform and Formie both integrate with MailChimp and Constant Contact.

Integrations to automatically send entries to customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Salesforce or Hubspot

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Freeform and Formie both integrate with Salesforce and Hubspot.

Payment forms integrated with PayPal

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Freeform and Formie both integrate with PayPal.

Payment forms integrated with Stripe

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Craft CMS: The Craft CMS developers offer a first-party Stripe extension. Freeform and Formie both integrate with Stripe.

Multi-page forms

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms or WSForm.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Freeform and Formie both allow multi-page forms.

Multi-step, multi-user complex workflow forms

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Gravity Forms plus Gravity Flow (an additional $299/year). WSForm can’t do this one.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Users who want multi-step, multi-user complex workflow forms might need to use an external solution embedded by iFrame like Jotform and Formstack.

Design

Drag and drop page builder

WordPress: Yes, kinda. WordPress has a page builder in core, commonly known as Gutenberg. But its functionality is limited enough that a high percentage of WordPress-based sites use a more fully-featured page builder. The most popular is Elementor ($84/year). Two of the best are Bricks Builder ($79/year) and the upcoming Etch.

Craft CMS: Not in core. The Matrix content field allows rearranging content blocks, but is not a drag and drop page builder. Neo ($49/project + $19/year renewals) is like Matrix but adds additional functionality.

Drag and drop page builder with fully visual option where you can see what the page looks like as you build it

WordPress: Yes, kinda. Gutenberg’s builder view is similar but not identical to the end result. Elementor, Bricks, and Etch are all fully visual page builders.

Craft CMS: Not in core. There is a preview option which enables you to see what you’re building in a split panel, but it’s not as part of a drag and drop page builder.

Drag and drop page builder enabling complex layouts and all CSS features

WordPress: No. Gutenberg has enough limitations that users who need complex layouts end up using a page builder like Elementor, Bricks, or Etch, unless they want to do a considerable amount of custom development.

Craft CMS: Not in core.

CSS Framework to set and later change CSS settings on a sitewide basis

WordPress: No. Bricks Builder and Etch both integrate with Automatic.css ($79/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Developers building sites with Craft CMS often implement external frameworks like Tailwind or Bootstrap.

Pre-built modules like accordions, heroes, news layouts, and image portfolios

WordPress: Not in core. Elementor has their own; Bricks and Etch have several options, one of which is Frames.

Craft CMS: Not in core.

Fonts: Upload custom files

WordPress: Yes.

Craft CMS: No font management in core. Fonts can be manually embedded through CSS.

Fonts: Add external font via CSS font-face declaration

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Craft CMS: Yes, through manual implementation in code.

Figma integration

WordPress: Not in core. Figma to WordPress ($79/year) integrates Figma designs with WordPress blocks. Frames for Figma integrates Figma designs into Bricks and Etch.

Craft CMS: Not in core.

eCommerce

eCommerce options available

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce (free core with paid plugins of its own) is the most common eCommerce solution for WordPress. NorthCommerce ($499 one-time fee) is a new and promising alternative.

Craft CMS: Yes, in core. Pixel & Tonic, the developers of Craft CMS, offer Craft Commerce ($1,199/project for year one, renewals $299/year).

PayPal integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce has a free PayPal integration (transaction fees apply).

Craft CMS: Available for Craft Commerce through PayPal Checkout for Craft Commerce (free).

Stripe integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce has a free Stripe integration (transaction fees apply).

Craft CMS: Available for Craft Commerce through Stripe for Commerce (free).

Square Payment Gateway integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce has a free Square integration (transaction fees apply).

Craft CMS: The official documentation does not list Square Payment Gateway as an available option.

Authorize.net integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooCommerce has an Authorize.net integration (transaction fees apply).

Craft CMS: The official documentation does not list Authorize.net as an available option.

Google Pay integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooPayments (free) for WooCommerce can enable this.

Craft CMS: The official documentation does not list Google Pay as an available option.

Apple Pay integration

WordPress: Not in core. WooPayments (free) for WooCommerce can enable this.

Craft CMS: The official documentation does not list Apple Pay as an available option.

Amazon Pay integration

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce via Amazon Pay for WooCommerce (free).

Craft CMS: The official documentation does not list Amazon Pay as an available option.

Sales tax calculation

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce via WooCommerce Tax (free).

Craft CMS: Yes, in Craft Commerce.

Sales tax collection

WordPress: Not available. WooCommerce enables you to collect and report sales tax but does not collect it for you.

Craft CMS: Craft Commerce enables you to collect and report sales tax but does not collect it for you.

UPS / USPS calculations & labels

WordPress: Not in core. Available in WooCommerce via WooCommerce Shipping (free).

Craft CMS: Not in core. ShipStation Connect from Foster Commerce enables Cract Commerce users to connect to ShipStation for creating shipping labels and packing lists and allowing users to receive order tracking.

Digital Downloads

WordPress: Not in core. Available in WooCommerce core. If you’re only selling digital downloads and not physical items, you might choose Easy Digital Downloads ($199/year) instead.

Craft CMS: Digital Products for Craft Commerce (free) adds this functionality.

Digital Downloads from Amazon S3

WordPress: Not in core. Available in WooCommerce via Amazon S3 Storage for WooCommerce ($89/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core.

Inventory Management

WordPress: Not in core. Available in WooCommerce.

Craft CMS: Included in Craft Commerce.

Subscription capabilities

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce via WooCommerce Subscriptions ($279/year). If you’re only selling subscriptions to digital downloads and not physical items, you might choose Easy Digital Downloads ($199/year) instead.

Craft CMS: Subscriptions can be set up in Craft Commerce via the Stripe Gateway.

Google Analytics events

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce via Google Analytics Pro for WooCommerce ($79/year).

Craft CMS: Analytics by Dukt used to offer Google Analytics for Craft Commerce but is no longer maintained.

Facebook Pixel integration

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in Facebook for WooCommerce (free).

Craft CMS: Integration would likely need to be done manually.

Bookings & Reservations

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in WooCommerce Bookings ($249/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Available through Events by Verbb ($149/year, renewals at $45/year).

Paid Memberships

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in WooCommerce Memberships ($199/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core. It can be done with some custom development via their Stripe plugin.

Complex Discounts

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in Product Dynamic Pricing and Discounts for WooCommerce ($99/year).

Craft CMS: Craft Commerce includes complex discounts.

PDF invoices

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce (free).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Commerce Invoices by wndr.digital adds this functionality for Craft Commerce.

International customers can switch currencies

WordPress: Not in core. Available for WooCommerce in Currency Switcher for WooCommerce ($99/year).

Craft CMS: Craft Commerce includes some currency internationalization features, and these are expended by the free Commerce Currency Prices add-on.

Accessibility

Out of the box default WCAG 2.2 AA compliance

WordPress: Yes, in core. Accessibility in the ecosystem is more hit and miss. There are some tools that have really focused on it (like Gravity Forms, Bricks Builder, and Etch) and others that are more problematic.

Craft CMS: Craft CMS is intentionally working toward full WCAG 2.2 AA compliance and publicly tracking their progress toward this road.

Tools to achieve full WCAG 2.2 AA compliance on complex landing pages

WordPress: Not in core. Most elements in Bricks Builder lend themselves to building a fully WCAG 2.2 AA-compliant complex landing page.

Craft CMS: Not in core.

Built-in accessibility prompts in the editor for WCAG 2.2 AA compliance fails

WordPress: Not in core. This can be achieved through Equalize Digital’s Accessibility Checker (free version with $229/year pro version).

Craft CMS: Not in core.

Built-in accessibility scanning/audits for WCAG 2.2 AA compliance

WordPress: Not in core. This can be achieved through Equalize Digital’s Accessibility Checker (free version with $229/year pro version).

Craft CMS: Not in core.

Privacy

Privacy policy generator

WordPress: Yes, limited. Complianz (€59/year) builds more comprehensive privacy policies.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Users will likely need to need to use a third-party service.

GDPR / CCPA compliance

WordPress: Not in core. Put another way, WordPress core does not enable ways to make an entire WordPress site including its themes and plugins GDPR and CCPA compliant. Complianz (€59/year) enables more comprehensive compliance with these and several other privacy laws across the world.

Craft CMS: Craft CMS complies with privacy laws themselves but doesn’t offer tools in core to enable their users to automate and ease making their own sites compliant.

Cookie Consent

WordPress: Not in core. There are plenty of cookie consent plugins for WordPress; Complianz (€59/year) is one of the best because of how it enables compliance with many other privacy-related laws.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Third-party extensions to enable cookie consent include Cookie Consent by Elera ($39/site, plus $10/year renewals) and Cookies Consent Bar for Craft CMS by Common Ninja.

Multi-lingual

Craft CMS only offers their control panel in 27 languages, including six of the top ten most spoken languages globally: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Arabic, and also offers Simplified Chinese to partially cover one more.

WordPress has a clear edge for admin editing in other languages with its editor available in dozens of languages, including full support for English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, Bengali, Portuguese, and Russian, and partial support for the rest of the top 10: Hindi, Modern Standard Arabic, and Urdu.

Out-of-the-box features to build multilingual websites

WordPress: Not in core. There are several good plugins for this, including WPML (€99/year).

Craft CMS: Multilingual support included in core by default.

Translate entire site automatically through AI

WordPress: Not in core. WPML (€99/year) offers this (with additional fees for the AI translation).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Available through external services like Linguise or Multi Translator.

Translate entire site automatically through ChatGPT

WordPress: Not in core. WPML (€99/year) offers this (with additional fees for the AI translation).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Available through Multi Translator.

Ability to stylize language switcher

WordPress: Not in core. WPML (€99/year) offers this (with additional fees for the AI translation).

Craft CMS: Not in core; this would be done by hand.

SEO

Sitemap generation

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Available via the SEOmatic extension ($99, plus $49/year renewals).

Ability to add meta title and description

WordPress: No. Available via a number of plugins, like Yoast, RankMath, and SEOPress (the free versions work for all three).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Available via the SEO, SEOMate, and SEOmatic extensions.

Schema Markup (e.g. recipe, job postings)

WordPress: Not in core. Available in RankMath (pro version, $95.88/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Available via the SEOmatic extension ($99, plus $49/year renewals).

Built-in basic SEO audit tools (missing or poorly structured data)

WordPress: Not in core. Available in RankMath (pro version, $95.88/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Available via the SEOmatic extension ($99, plus $49/year renewals).

Built-in advanced SEO audit tools (keyword optimization, readability, search intent)

WordPress: Not in core. Available within the admin in the Ahrefs SEO plugin (some features for free, more for $99/month).

Craft CMS: Not in core. SEO for Craft CMS does offer keyword optimization analysis.

In-admin Google Ranking tracker

WordPress: Not in core. Available within the admin in the Ahrefs SEO plugin (some features for free, more for $99/month).

Craft CMS: Not in core.

Backups

Full-site offsite backups

WordPress: Not in core. Available through UpdraftPlus ($70/year) or VaultPress ($119.40/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Available through Enupal Backups and Remote Backups.

Full-site offsite backups to your storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3)

WordPress: Not in core. Available through UpdraftPlus ($70/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Available through Enupal Backups and Remote Backups.

Incremental backups (only back up what’s changed)

WordPress: Not in core. Available through UpdraftPlus ($70/year) or VaultPress ($119.40/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core.

One-click full site restore from backup

WordPress: Not in core. Available through VaultPress ($119.40/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Craft CMS’s Cloud hosting does include backup functionality.

One-click full site incremental restore from backup, only restoring what broke

WordPress: Not in core. Available through VaultPress ($119.40/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core.

Learning Management Systems (Course Building)

Learning Management System: Course Builder

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core and would require custom development.

Learning Management System: Quiz Builder

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core (as part of a learning management system) and would require custom development.

Learning Management System: Gamification (leaderboards and points)

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core (as part of a learning management system) and would require custom development.

Learning Management System: Scheduled release (drip) of lessons based on days since a course started

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core (as part of a learning management system) and would require custom development.

Learning Management System: Scheduled release (drip) of lessons based on date of the calendar

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core (as part of a learning management system) and would require custom development.

Learning Management System: Paid courses

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core (as part of a learning management system) and would require custom development.

Learning Management System: Multi-lingual courses

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core (as part of a learning management system) and would require custom development. That said, Craft CMS’s built-in multi-lingual functionality would be useful when doing that custom development.

Learning Management System: Analytics to identify struggling learners

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year) plus the ProPanel extension ($99/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core (as part of a learning management system) and would require custom development.

Learning Management System: Two-way communication with students for coaching

WordPress: Not in core. Available through LearnDash ($199/year) plus the Notes extension ($49/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core (as part of a learning management system) and would require custom development.

Performance

Lazy Loading

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Craft CMS: Not in core. NYStudio107 has a blog post explaining how to implement it in Craft CMS using the lazysizes Javascript file.

Code Minification

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Available through the free Minify plugin.

Easy CDN integration

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Craft CMS: Pixel & Tonic offers an official Amazon S3 plugin for Craft CMS. It also offers a straightforward way to integrate other CDNs through Settings > Assets > New Asset Source.

Excellent default Core Web Vitals Statistics

No plugin produces excellent Core Web Vitals by itself. The user needs to follow best practices in creating and optimizing the content. But the right technical optimizations will give users a much better head start in Core Web Vitals compliance.

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core. Performance enhancements are available through a variety of plugins.

Excellent built-in caching options

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Craft CMS: Craft CMS has multiple layers of caching built into its core offering.

Optimizing for Largest Contentful Paint with rules for it to load as fast as possible

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core and would require custom development.

Gzip/Brotli compression

WordPress: Not in core. Available through WPRocket ($59/year). (Often handled by the web host.)

Craft CMS: Not in core and requires either custom development or being offered by the web host.

Visual Regression

Before and after scans after core or plugin updates to detect unwanted changes

WordPress: Not in core. Some hosts (including WPEngine and Flywheel) include this with hosting. Otherwise, Visual Regression Tests $90/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core; would require custom development or integration with an external service.

Before and after scans after core or plugin updates to detect unwanted changes, with automatic rollback if something unintended changed

WordPress: Not in core. Some hosts (including WPEngine and Flywheel) include this with hosting. Otherwise, Visual Regression Tests $90/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core; would require custom development or integration with an external service.

Security

2-factor authentication for user login

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Craft CMS: Included in core.

Vulnerability and Malware Scanning

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core.

Firewall for real-time detection of cross-site-scripting (XSS) and other threats

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core.

Ability to blacklist all IPs except approved IPs from login

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core.

Ability to restrict country blocks of IPs from login

WordPress: Not in core. Available through Wordfence ($149/year).

Craft CMS: Not in core.

Compliance

PCI Compliance

WordPress: Dependent on the host. Many WordPress hosts offer PCI-compliant WordPress hosting.

Craft CMS: Not in core.

GDPR Compliance

WordPress: Dependent on the host. Many WordPress hosts offer GDPR-compliant hosting plans.

Craft CMS: Not in core. Craft CMS limits the personal data it collects by excluding at least some personally identifiable information from the information its cookies collect, like IP addresses.

HIPAA Compliance (patient medical information)

WordPress: Dependent on the host. Most hosts are not HIPAA-compliant, but they exist; HIPAA Vault offers HIPAA-compliant WordPress hosting.

Craft CMS: Dependent on the host.

FERPA Compliance (student academic information)

WordPress: Dependent on the host. Most hosts have not considered whether they are FERPA-compliant, but some are. In particular, since HIPAA is a more stringent threshold, there is a decent possibility that a host that is HIPAA-compliant is also FERPA-compliant.

Craft CMS: Dependent on the host.

Lock-in

Ability to export to formats that several other content management systems can import

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Craft CMS: Craft CMS offers limited export functionality, allowing exporting posts to CSV, XML, or JSON.

Ability to import from formats that several other content management systems can export

WordPress: Yes, in core.

Craft CMS: Pixel & Tonic, the developers of Craft CMS, acquired Feed Me and made it free. It allows import from XML, RSS, ATOM, CSV and JSON.

Developer Features

Availability to access CMS features via API

WordPress: Yes, through the REST API in core.

Craft CMS: Yes, through the GraphQL API.

Local development enviroment options

WordPress: Not in core. Available in LocalWP (free).

Craft CMS: Craft CMS recommends using DDEV for local development.

Ability to integrate with headless front-ends

WordPress: Not fully in core; REST API can be used but has limitations. Developers who build headless front-ends often use WP GraphQL (free).

Craft CMS: Users of the pro version can use GraphQL to integrate with a headless front-end.

Scalability for massive traffic spikes

WordPress: Not in core. A considerable amount of caching and other optimizations has to happen at the plugin and hosting level.

Craft CMS: Core includes support for load balancing and caching.

Scalability for massive websites

WordPress: Not in core. Its database starts to slow the site down dramatically in sites with millions of posts, pages, or custom post types. Custom development work will usually be required to set up database sharding.

Craft CMS: Craft CMS offers a tutorial for methods to enable a site to run with tens of millions of elements.

Community

Number of third-party add-ons

WordPress: 59,000 plugins in official directory, plus hundreds of premium plugins that aren’t listed there.

Craft CMS: There are several hundred free and premium plugins available in Craft CMS’s official plugin directory.

Largest YouTube channels with consistent how-to content

WordPress: There is an excellent educational community around WordPress on YouTube.

Official brand channels include:

• Elementor (357,000 subscribers, 779 videos)
• Elegant Themes (Divi) (215,000 subscribers, 2,600 videos)
• WordPress (111,000 subscribers, 5,500 videos)

Independent creators include:

• Ferdy Korpershoek (1,240,000 subscribers, 530 videos)
• WPBeginner (1,020,000 subscribers, 1,200 videos)
• Tyler Moore (474,000 subscribers, 236 videos)
• WPCrafter (250,000 subscribers, 620 videos)
• WPTuts (178,000 subscribers, 1,100 videos)
• Jamie WP (178,000 subscribers, 478 videos)
• Web Squadron (123,000 subscribers, 2,200 videos)
• Kevin Geary (20,000 subscribers, 241 videos)

Craft CMS: They have an official YouTube channel with 68 subscribers and 3 videos.

Independent creators include:

• CraftQuest (Ryan Ireland) (3,000 subscribers, 181 videos)
• Straight Up Craft (500 subscribers, 46 videos)

Up-to-date, detailed official documentation

WordPress: Yes, the official WordPress documentation is fairly extensive and detailed, though it is not equally up-to-date and equally detailed in all areas.

Craft CMS: Yes, Craft offers official documentation and an official knowledge base.

Direct support from official team behind tool

WordPress: No.

Craft CMS: Craft Pro users receive basic support from the official team and can pay for priority support options.

Learning Curve

What is the onboarding process like?

WordPress: It is fairly easy to onboard onto core WordPress. Some hosts have it pre-installed, and the admin user interface is fairly easy to learn. But for users who need advanced features, it can take a long time to learn all the leading tools in the ecosystem, and to develop reasons to prefer one set of tools to another.

Craft CMS: Craft offers a getting started tutorial. It is an approachable learning curve for developers but may be more challenging for beginners.

How easy is it for a beginner to find the best option(s) for each of these features?

WordPress: It’s hard. I’ve been working with WordPress virtually every day for nineteen years, and I was more than a decade in before I was really comfortable with understanding all the major players in the ecosystem and having solid reasons to prefer one over the other.

Craft CMS: Developers familiar with developer-oriented tools should not have too much difficulty learning the Craft CMS ecoysystem. Their official documentation and the CraftQuest YouTube channel can help users learn best practices.

Official Comparisons

Craft CMS offers an official Craft CMS vs. WordPress comparison. WordPress doesn’t offer an official comparison on its official website.

So is WordPress or Craft CMS better?

It depends on who you are and what you need. Let’s compare it for ten use types.

Beginners who need ease of use and a clearly marked pathway to key features

The amount of resources devoted to teaching WordPress make it an easier onboarding experience for beginners who are not developers. On the other hand, Craft CMS’s official documentation, knowledge base, and plugin directory would help developers understand the scope of the ecoystem more easily than for WordPress.

Small brochure business websites that need basic functionality and affordability

WordPress and Craft CMS are both good options.

Small eCommerce sites that sell physical items

WordPress’s shipping integrations give it an edge over Craft CMS.

Content publishers like blogs and news websites

WordPress and Craft CMS are both excellent options.

Educational sites with courses/learning management

WordPress + Learndash has a clear edge.

Mutilingual sites

Craft CMS has an advantage, where tools to present content in multiple languages are built right in (where WordPress needs an additional plugin).

Marketers who need no-code, highly customizable drag and drop visual page builders and form builders

WordPress + Bricks has a clear edge.

Controversial websites

WordPress and Craft CMS are equally good options. Both are open source tools where you own your data and choose your hosting. They are unlike closed-source platforms like Shopify and Squarespace, where a single entity can make a decision which cannot be appealed to end your website and force you to begin website development from scratch on a different platform.

Highly regulated industries (HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FERPA, other forms of security and compliance)

Since WordPress and Craft CMS are both open-source tools where you can choose your own hosting, neither has a clear advantage here. Both have an advantage over some proprietary solutions where compliance is completely impossible.

Enterprise websites

Both are excellent options for enterprise websites. Both will likely require custom development work to power the largest sites, with millions or tens of millions of posts, but this scale has been achieved with both.

Agencies with 100 small and medium business clients

Craft CMS, at $279 or $399/site, has a substantially higher upfront cost than WordPress’s free core. But it includes enough features agencies may have to pay separately for in WordPress sites that there may be a path to cost parity in some cases. It is likely to be more expensive in most cases.

Final Thoughts

I really appreciate that Craft CMS has added a number of features that WordPress doesn’t have, like native custom post types, native 2-factor authentication, and native multilingual sites. WordPress really should have had these a decade ago.

That said, it doesn’t have key features that are must-have for sites I run. WordPress doesn’t in core, either, but the WordPress plugin and theme ecosystem does. And it’s helpful to have several strong visual page builder options in WordPress for sites I build for clients who need and expect that option.

But if Craft CMS’s core features meet your needs, you may find it an easier experience than the research and time needed to find all the WordPress themes and plugins you might need to accomplish the same things.